It seems hard to believe that anyone could be entirely ignorant of the nature and legal protections on the Internet at this point, but those people are still out there, as writer Monica Gaudio discovered when a print editor stole her content and then shined her on by saying “the Internet is public domain.”

Here’s the story: way back in 2005, Monica Gaudio wrote an article about apple pie recipes for a blog devoted to — of all things — medieval, Chaucer-era cooking, complete with spellings of certain words appropriate to the era. Five years later, though, Gaudio was alerted to her post appearing in the non-profit Cooks Source magazine… a non-profit publication with a circulation of between 17,000 and 28,000 readers.

Gaulio remained calm: mistakes happen. She emailed the managing editor, Judith Griggs, asking for clarification. When it turned out that Griggs had wilfully republished the piece, Gaudio asked for an apology and a donation to Columbia’s Journalism school.

Instead, she got this almost unfathomably ignorant retort:

But honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence [sic] and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally.

Needless to say, the internet is not “public domain.” How could anyone think otherwise? If the internet was public domain, we wouldn’t see music labels suing Bittorrent users for millions in damages.

Laughably, Griggs got something else wrong too: the “need of editing” she’s complaining about is actually the correction of archaic spellings used in the apple pie recipes.

What a dope. I’m guessing Griggs wishes she’d simply written the check and kept her mouth shut now: this story’s all over the place today.

Reader Comments

I don’t like to be the grammar or spelling police, and I normally don’t say anything unless there are a lot of errors. Sadly, there are quite a few in this article:

* “words appropriate to the error” should be “words appropriate to the era”.

* “a non-profit piblication” should be “a non-profit publication”.
with a circulation of between 17,000 and 28,000 readers.

* “Gaulio remained calim” should be “Gaulio remained calm”.

* “When it turned out that Griggs had willfully republished the piece, Griggs asked for an apology” should be “When it turned out that Griggs had willfully republished the piece, Gaulio asked for an apology.” (It was Gaulio asking for the apology, after all).

Interesting article, but a little bit of proof reading goes a long way.

There have been a lot of cases like this in the past. 4 or 5 (?) years ago, one of the largest news papers in my state ran a fairly long article (1/2 of a page or so), and all of it was a single copy and paste from an article on the net. IIRC, the person who did this tried to justify her actions with all sorts of excuses. She started out claiming she had completely rewritten (“edited”) the article, but it was just a direct copy and paste. Then she claimed she was so overworked (doing the work of 3 people) and needed an article by the 5 PM deadline, so she was forced to copy and paste and change the author. This story was also quickly debunked. Then she claimed it’s OK to do this, because everyone else does it. Uh, no they don’t. People took a closer look at her other recent articles, and then found a lot of plagiarism in these – entire streams of paragraphs copied and pasted from the net.

In the end, after wheeling out a mind boggling list of ever more ridiculous “excuses” (“lies” is more accurate), she sort of admitted what she had done – but never came right out and apologized or made amends. She was just disorganized (often), got behind (often), copied and pasted the work of others and called it her own (often), and then wheeled out a raft of career destroying lies to try and cover her tracks.

Epic Fail!

Moose Valley

Actually, change the “sued” to “suing” to fit in with the rest of the sentence.

Matthew Humphries

@ Moose Valley

Thanks for taking the time to write those comments Moose. Clearly we needed to spend a bit more time on this write-up before making it live. We appreciate the feedback.

Moose Valley

Thanks Mathew, no worries. :)

You guys are working hard and rushing to bring us the latest news, its perfectly understandable that some mistakes may creep in from time to time.

I certainly appreciate all of your hard work. I visit Geek at least once per day. :)